L. A. W. Bulletin and Good Roads, Vol 27, No 1
Articles in this issue
- Editorial leader arguing that the summer bicycle habit has carried women and girls into winter skating and outdoor sport, making the wheel an all-the-year-round 'family physician.'
- Editorial explaining why the BULLETIN declines to print every correspondent's complaint about a rough road, an overcharging railroad, or a poor League hotel, since conflicting testimony shows many grievances are imaginary.
- Editorial praising the bicycle skirt as the world's most practical dress reform and urging women to keep wearing short skirts through the snowy, sloppy winter season.
- Editorial reprinting an American Medico Surgical Bulletin piece on the use and abuse of the bicycle, defending moderate cycling as immensely valuable against critics who would condemn it for the excesses of a few.
- Essay on man's instinct to make everything a wheel, quoting an 1873 New York writer's 'The Wheel Instinct' on oars, sails, and the cycle as the masterpiece of mechanical skill.
- Illustrated feature analysing the 'scorcher' and the proper riding position, with four figures showing inclinations from vertical to racing crouch and advice on saddle, pedal and handle-bar adjustment.
- Note on the revival of roller chains over the block pattern, said to run cleaner though racing men object that they cannot jump quickly into a sprint.
- Report that a Clean Street Alliance has been formed in St. Louis, with a five-member committee in each precinct and a central executive, to improve the city's very bad streets.
- History instalment tracing the earliest two-wheelers from possible 1767 machines and the 1808 hobby-horse through Baron von Drais' Draisine, Niepce's Celeripede, and Dennis Johnson's Pedestrian Curricle.
- Illustrated article by Geo. L. Wilson on the St. Paul Cycle Path Association, which built thirty miles of side-path in two seasons toward Como Park, Fort Snelling and White Bear Lake, with construction methods and per-mile costs.
- Reprint of a Denver correspondent's proposal for a hundred-foot stone highway from Boston west through Cleveland, St. Louis, Denver and Salt Lake to San Francisco, estimated at some $200,000,000.
- Notice that the official count of names in the membership-recruiting competition will be held until next week to insure accuracy, since forms had to be made up Monday, Jan. 3rd.
- Good Roads article on how the Massachusetts Highway Commission trains road-builders through its sixty resident engineers, county hearings and an engineers' association, alongside courses at the Institute of Technology and the Lawrence Scientific School.
- Note on a new Michigan law requiring turnpike companies to repair their roads within six months or forfeit the right to collect tolls, plus a proposed local-option side-path tax in New York.
- Tabulated Massachusetts figures for macadam road construction, showing an average completed cost of $10,369 per mile across the 107 miles built by the end of 1896.
- Good Roads essay on the bad location of country roads by partial 'viewers,' reprinting Deputy Secretary of Agriculture John Hamilton's nineteen-point Road Viewers' Report form.
- Report that Maryland work is concentrated on bills for a state road engineer and highway commission, with the Vansville farmers' club enlisting others to urge action on the legislature.
- Official directory of 1897-98 League officers (President Isaac B. Potter, Secretary Abbot Bassett) and standing committees, followed by numerous proposed amendments to the L.A.W. Constitution and By-Laws ahead of the St. Louis National Assembly, including a junior-membership clause and amateur-rule changes.
- Consolidated state-division notices and annual-meeting reports from Ohio, Kansas, New Jersey, Indiana, Colorado, Kentucky, Maryland, District of Columbia, Massachusetts and other divisions, naming delegates elected to the National Assembly.
- Condensed report of the New York State Division annual meeting under Chief Consul Walter S. Jenkins, listing officers' reports, delegates, appropriations, and resolutions thanking retiring Chief Consul Isaac B. Potter and opposing a bicycle tax.
- Chairman Albert Mott's notices restoring or refusing sanctions (Luzerne County Fair, W. C. Bass, Henry J. Pote, the Reading Trotting Association), accepting amateur and professional records, and suspending E. T. Lewis of Baltimore.
- State-by-state lists of names received for League membership under the renumbering scheme, with heavy entries from Indiana, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts and totals running past 121,000.
- Editorial answers to readers' numbered queries on cyclometer accuracy, the League's membership renumbering decided at the Albany Assembly, and where to obtain cycling maps of the British Isles.
- Advice that cyclists touring Britain and Ireland should join the Cyclists' Touring Club for road books and reduced hotel rates, with applications sent to Frank W. Weston of Savin Hill, Boston.